Yes. These are the days we are in. I hear your concern. I know CJ. I know him for other reasons…did he say the end is coming? I totally hear where you are coming from. Of the appearance of two extremes, I would be naturally drawn to your point of view. I love JD a lot, even though on some key issues, I disagree quite a bit. I am appreciative of his ministry and that he is very interested in the fanning the flames of excitement in the saints towards Christ’s soon return. I also think it is healthy that you have a place to share and voice your concerns or where you disagree.
I have kind of a different take though than JD or you Joseph. I do see actually both sides or takes, yours and his. It is not so much that i am conflicted, but knowing what the tempered balancing out of those two differing worldviews can produce fruitfully. In respect to America’s conservative movement I am in your isle. And on understanding how varying saints are understanding what is going on (there are quite a bit of saints who hate or are disgusted with Trump and not able to see the goodness as much on the conservative side because of it), I am hopeful to better understand what is important to them. So my interest is becoming how to get a sense in how to help others who don’t see it as I. And what that help (encouragement or edification) might look like or mean. I have some very VERY strong convictions I have shared on this forum. And i don’t shy in saying. Or arguing. I am just saying that there is a large vast group of disenfranchised people that will see patriotism in current American packaging as idolatry or nearing it. I see something so radically different that distinguishing what I see aside from their concerns and is a very nuanced and almost an impossibility to convey. But i try. At the same time though, this forum (since pretty different than I think–although we do agree on much and i do adore JD’s demeanor…and even his stance…even though i don’t agree in places) helps me to sharping fellowship skills in a radically fractured world and church. Not to compromise. But to learn how what I see coming might be helpful. Not the return or Christ or the rapture. Something other. But, like I said, I am learning hopefully best how to go about sharing that.
In any case, I fully hear you Joseph and am encouraged by both a forum for you to speak out your concerns as well as Pastor JD providing a forum to do so as well (not to mention most churches do not believe it is endtimes—this is where you and I may differ Joseph). So the rest of this is kind of an essay of what my struggles are, as I understand them. This is not about the thing I see coming. This is about trying to understand differing ways to approach differences in the body (if that thing I see coming if true and if real).
To whatever extent it may be of encouragement, I have taken the opportunity to use your forthrightness to challenge me to grow in ways helpful to best search out how best to convey things to the siding of others so different from me…at least…that is my conviction. A conviction that is NOT conflicted between patriotism and standing up for the truth–I see those as a complimentary blend, not just because something is likely coming or the end be near, but precisely related to the very nature of what that is that i see coming. In other words, I do think it is end times and believe that God has set up a stage where patriotism, truth, and trust in Him have passionate relationship with one another–not because of the rapture but because of what is likely coming…and if so…and if be true…very soon (having nothing to do or any sentiment related to NAR…NAR is a false Christian cult and I can only hope that some may be saved in that movement aside from their idolatry). I am a cessationist by the way. I am not prophesying, and I am a futurist (meaning that we are on the verge of a 7 year tribulation after a rapture followed by a thousand year reign of Christ). I hope this little essay is helpful. I spent a few hours in respect to your post. Blessing.
MAGGA or EGGE
Evil as Good / Good as Evil
On one hand there are convictions to trust God beyond what we don’t understand unfolding–which is likely the rubric here. In addition we have a society that has never seen the likes of a politician we have (the good and the bad), and in culture shock are elated or disgusted. Furthermore an advancement exists to demonize that politician by its opposition (which uses both reasonable concerns and radically unreasonable concerns and helps the masses to blend them together as one). More over, we have God fulfilling prophecy, and globalists with their agendas, and well intended folk in the middle with conventional convictions not necessarily aligned with the prime time convergence of events collapsing together into an epicenter witness of the entire world (with all our varying preconceived worldviews focused simultaneously upon it).
That ground zero actually has a better rubric than our first. It would appear to be the rubric of, “What do you think you see?” Which, to me, is reminiscent of “Who do you say that I am” or a Canaanite woman’s challenge of “I came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” We are called today to make of what well intended reasonably overzealous patriotism does when it meets a genuine concern to trust God in a world perhaps where neither extremity of either of those senses most profoundly discerns the actual soundness of its sublime context. Meaning likely that neither the social hermeneutic of patriotism by itself nor not patriotism but trusting God alone instead are, by themselves, the key to see correctly. If we look at the big picture, the picture that takes both extremes into account and works toward the healing and consideration of where there is divide more than the picture of the “selfie” (which we all do) of how well that conviction looks on us, that, I believe, is overcoming the enemies use of our convictions.
I perceive part of the dynamics the enemy uses today is to pit one against the other. It is a ripe time for that. I believe our generation has a measure of confusion over the place of convictions in our lives, not knowing the difference between having convictions and knowing what they are best for or how to use them in the moment. It is almost as if we got to a certain grade level in school where they taught us how to have convictions (convictions 101), how to tell others about ours, how to defend our convictions, also how to contrast our brothers convictions effectively.
In some ways we almost have to learn how to be overcomers…like we need to overcome overcoming one another. Even though we missed the course on “What to do with convictions” (convictions 102), it is good to realize before setting out a course for our own convictions that we best and deeper realize that even though we do not always know how to make best use of our convictions…the enemy certainly does. For this is his day. The age of ripe convictions primed at the ready for supernatural use…only that light too can get us into dark trouble. Trouble that may never be seen. But trouble non-the-less. Which is why I say: It is a day, not so much of whose conviction is more correct, but a day the enemy uses our own convictions to serve his interests of them–thus, we have need overcoming the enemies use of our convictions. That, to me…in Christ, is what to do when good is evil and evil is good and it becomes increasingly more difficult to know convictions conventional boundaries or which end is up anymore. Is it right to be patriotic? Yes. Is it right to proverbially support a sitting president (proverbs calls it folly not to…and all authority is given by God). Is it good to resist in a free society? Yes–or can be. Is it good to riot? No. is it good to trust God more than man and government? Yes. Is that conviction (which is good for you) good for another who understands trusting God in actions differently than you? Yes. Is our convictions of what is best for others or what is edifying for others always correct? No. Is understanding that others that see things differently may not be wrong? Yes. Is it necessary to have discernment to distinguish the difference between what is helpful and what is most edifying? Yes. All these things swirl along together today within the tornado of ideology implosion all around us. And the enemy loves that. The task, as I see it, is not to be the last man standing, but the first one standing outside the paradigm of the flesh…where both good and evil are the same.
The result of brewing in that flesh mire might have the tendency to become a pop-up book artwork story land where convictions become our avatars of personage. The dilemma of postmodernism is to be the person more than the avatar, and the dilemma of post postmodernism (ppModernism) is, I believe, to not allow ourselves to be intimidated by the versions of what we have believed about social norms. By intimidation i don’t mean that we should not continue in healthy respect of them. But rather, that we may tend to allow other ideologies (even good ones, like “Trust God,” or “I’m patriotic”) to war against our members where they might intimidate and move us slightly from a reasonable and otherwise steady course of an otherwise well grounded conviction.
For we are likely entering into an age where (we see it all around us) social norms are inverting, imploding, distorting, and dispossessing their originally understood form. ppModerism, to me = the ability to operate outside the social avatar. For example, social norms are colliding when we think, as a society, we should defund the police. Or let mass prisoners out of jail. Or accept intimidation and violence as healthy social correction etc. There is a blend of ideology that has ceased to be ideas and in its stead has become a conspiracy of our fragile idea boundaries intermarrying with categories that belong in completely separate idea families). We are the generation of good is evil and evil good.
How can she not know that her conservative party would not care so much about her thoughts? Thanks for the article.